


i'll pull an ssr before you pull my heart

by orphan_account



Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: Fake Dating, M/M, a whole lot of ???, beta, dont get it, if i go, want to hear a joke, will update tags as I go, you know i dont
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:15:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21605908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: ominous muku voice: oh but fake dating doesn't stay fake for too long.--
Relationships: Chigasaki Itaru/Utsuki Chikage
Comments: 6
Kudos: 126





	i'll pull an ssr before you pull my heart

**Author's Note:**

> i have never been this unclear of my vision on the progression / end goal of a fic but this so unclear that i don't know if i'll ever even write anymore of it, yet since this part's already written, i'm just gonna throw it out into the void

Suffocating. 

Such was the feeling of being in the same room as this woman, Itaru thinks idly in a small portion at the back of his mind. The larger, more rational part is trying to focus on keeping his smile: up, his tone polite. But even that was waning. 

How one person’s perfume could fog up the entire room, how such a small frame could feel so large as to completely block off the way out of the company’s decently sized pantry. These were questions Itaru knew he shouldn’t be entertaining at present but they’ve crept into his thoughts unwarranted. 

“You really must come.” Says the beautifully painted lips, red like blood from Itaru’s heart. “I just know the Board would be happy to see you.” It continues. 

“On a Sunday?!” Itaru thinks, already acutely aware of the clashes in his event schedule. “Hell no.” But he wrestled his tongue against saying that. 

And with a painful swallow, “As much as it pains me to have to keep denying, Mdm, I just don’t think that’s proper for the likes of m-” 

“Now you’re just overthinking,” she dismisses, “though that’s pretty cute of you.” 

Itaru had to bite back a surge of bile. “That’s not true, Sakurazuka-senpai.” 

“Nonsense, that’s plenty true.” A distinctively male voice shocks both Itaru and the pushy female senior, and they both snap to the sound to see their fellow colleague leaning against the doorframe, one eyebrow raised just slightly higher than the other. 

“Oh hello.” Sakurazuka laughs, it was mildly tinged with embarrassment. “Good to see you, Utsuki-san.” 

“Senpai.” Itaru nods carefully. 

Chikage gives him only the smallest of inclinations before he turns back to Sakurazuka, lowering like a hunting cat. “Yamada from Finance has been looking for you for awhile. If you’re not too preoccupied, that is.” 

“That guy really ought to pick whether he wants to be explicit with his anger or not.” Itaru reflects, but he makes extra sure not to accidentally vocalise that thought. 

Despite herself, and Itaru doesn’t blame her, Sakurazuka bristles a little before she straightens and, turning to promise Itaru something with her gaze, she sidesteps Chikage on the way out. The last boss himself does quite the same, shooting Itaru some strange amused message before he too disappears from the pantry entrance. 

Itaru didn’t like either of them. 

But he reminds himself of his purpose, that in-game currency wasn’t going to buy itself. After all, it was what he worked and waited for. Some small voice in his head is telling him that’s not entirely true. That he’s found a comfortable place where he can belong, and comfortable people that he can be himself with. It was quite a wonder, how their company started with just the five of them and Izumi, in her infinite patience and courage, and Itaru had personally got to witness the growth and expansion of a theatre he didn’t think he’d come to care so much for. Even when senpai joined. 

At which point his brain loops back to that funny look that he doesn’t like so he shrugs it off, losing himself in the clicking and the clacking of keyboards instead. 

Then the hour hand struck 6 and like clockwork, Itaru’s ready to make his move, as he normally does, when he is ambushed by that senior again. 

“Chigasaki, how’d you like to join us for drinks tonight?” The lips, redder than before, are smiling. 

“No.” Itaru thinks over and over in his head, finding his facade also having clocked off at the start of the hour, and very nearly letting that slip. Thank every luck star that he managed to catch himself in time. At which point he encounters another problem. What should he say back? What were his usual excuses again? He suddenly couldn’t remember. “I’m terribly sorry, blank.” “Thank you for inviting me but, blank.” And the second hand ticks on, and the lips incrementally curve down, and and and- 

Green hair slides into his peripheral. 

“Chigasaki, did you forget the meeting today?” 

“What meeting?” Itaru almost jolts back to attention. 

Chikage is giving him that amused look again, which sets off every single alarm bell in Itaru’s spine. 

“The one Izumi reminded us about.” 

Izumi reminded them about no such thing. 

“Oh that one!” But if senpai is going to dangle him a spiderweb out of hell, then who was he to complain. Thank God for improv training. “Right, I did forget about it.” 

“What’s this about?” Sakurazuka huffs from across of them. 

“It’s an acting thing.” Chikage replies breezily. 

“Right, the acting thing.” Sakurazuka deflates. 

“See you downstairs in 5,” Chikage says, patting Itaru on the shoulder, and then he’s gone just as silently and suddenly as he’d come. 

In the wake of the awkward turn of events, Itaru turned to offer Sakurazuka a half-smile. “I’m really sorry but please do invite me again next time.” 

Which is a shitty thing to have to say despite wishing the other party would please not, and yet social faux pas yadda yadda. 

Sakurazuka nods, “yes, perhaps next time.” Her disappointment rolls off her body in waves but her face betrays nothing, so Itaru pretends nothing is wrong, and bids her goodbye. He does maybe pity her a tad bit but it is quickly overshadowed by another worry making itself quite apparent in his consciousness. 

Out of the frying pan and into the fire, as they say. 

Which is why he greets senpai in his car not with any ‘hi’ ‘hello’ or ‘how are yous’, but a very straightforward, “what are you playing at?” 

Chikage only hums, checking his glove box like it was the most natural thing to do. 

“Senpai.” Itaru tries again. 

“Well what was I supposed to do?” Chikage lays a hand across his chest dramatically, “seeing my beloved kouhai so squirmish and pitiful?” 

Itaru raised an eyebrow, already pulling out his phone to quickly expend some LP while they were having this conversation. “I thought you were a sadist though.” 

“Your perception of me wounds me.” Chikage says, not sounding wounded in the slightest. 

“Right. So what are you really after.” 

Chikage looks in the mirror as he reverses the car. “Not much, but Sakurazuka’s been careless lately and romance should be the least of her worries.” 

It makes Itaru squeamish to hear the word ‘romance’ out of Chikage. “She wasn’t that serious.” He insists. “And besides she’ll probably give up in a few weeks. They usually do.” 

“And then Miyashita from Accounting is going to start flirting with you. Wow, the scam of your handsome face.” 

“I’m sure people would say the same about you.” 

Chikage’s lips curl slightly. “So you think I have a handsome face?” 

Itaru sighs, yeah he walked right into that one. “ _Objectively_. Besides,” he exits out of an app and into another, “there’s not much I can do about it.” 

Chikage lets out the most unconvinced scoff but then is too focused on navigating the peak hour roads to further comment, so Itaru loses himself in the silence of letting senpai do the driving so he can squeeze more hours into his game. This was a genius proposal that he had badgered senpai for a week about, “and we’d save money on gas too, come on, think about it. We have the same destinations.” Itaru’s not too sure which part of the proposal eventually sold senpai because it seemed mostly skewed in his favour. Then again, he wasn’t sure why senpai accepted to be his hardly around roommate way back then either but, and he said this before, he wasn’t going to complain. 

They were currently stuck in a particularly jammed part of the road, so Itaru was busying himself with some easy grinding, when Chikage spoke up. 

“There is a solution, you know.” 

A solution to what, Itaru’s long since forgotten. 

Chikage continues on anyway. “You could date.” 

Itaru looks downright incredulous. “Date? Me? Like with who?” 

“Like with me.” 

Itaru.exe has stopped working. 

Unfazed Chikage, that bastard, has the nerve to laugh. “Man, you should see the look on your face." 

Well yeah, how was Itaru supposed to react? Senpai didn’t have a single romantic bone in his body. But funny bone? Apparently the man got jokes. 

“Senpai is so mean.” He huffed. 

“It could just be in name, fake dating, as the youth call it.” 

Yeah but “why are you willing to put your name down for something so ridiculous?” Itaru wants to ask. He casts a look at senpai’s side profile but sees nothing there resembling an answer. That’s how it’s always been. Nobody ever knows what’s going on in that serpentine head of his. 

So Itaru mentally backtracks a bit, assesses the situation once more. What senpai was presenting to Itaru, was a ticket out of dealing with pushy coworkers at the low low price of being his associated lover. It mattered not why or what senpai stood to gain, Itaru should see it as another means to an end, another give and take. 

He inhales, finger lingering over the flashing [Game Start] button. 

“This offer is really on the table?” 

Chikage was tapping lightly at the wheel, eyes looking ahead. “Huh, yeah, why not?” 

Hey, what’s the worst that could happen. 

[Itaru and Chikage are now dating(?)]


End file.
